Generally when I do an article for Nat Geo, my research starts from scratch. Sometimes a magazine story grows into a book project, but seldom the other way around. I love working for National Geographic because the editors I work with are sharp, the photographers (such as my pal Nick Nichols) are certainly among the best in the world, the audience is large and curious about everything, and the magazine supports its writers when they are in the field. I've worked for them ever since the Megatransect series, in 2000-2001, and they've given me some of the most amazingly privileged research experiences, and some of the best writing experiences, in my life.

Everything on the web can have it's dark side, as far as I can tell. I've been told that Redditt tries to control such abuses. You can Google your way to pornography. With all due respect to your question and your concern, does that mean we should boycott Google?

Two answers to that. 1) My new book, Spillover, is of course my favorite, and it's certainly meant to be a page-turner for all readers, as well as an exploration of the dire subject of emerging diseases. 2) Some of my best (in my opinion) articles and essays can be seen easily on my website, www.davidquammen.com. they are also collected in books, such as The Boilerplate Rhino. The Song of the Dodo was my favorite of my own books, until Spillover took shape.

I haven't written fiction for years. I think I have much more to offer as a nonfiction writer, though fiction was where I began. Also, I love going out to do research, following scientists as they do their jobs, poking (sensitively) into other peoples lives. Nonfiction books or articles? I love both. Books take a long time; you can disappear for years. Doing articles also in the meantime gives you a chance to stick your head up and reach some readers. Also, magazines tend to have huge audiences, compared to the audience for the average book. When I do a piece for National Geographic, it reaches tens of millions of readers around the world. Gotta love that.

Not that much, but some. I don't let it worry me. But thanks for asking. I live a pretty quiet life in Montana and when I write, I try very hard to support what I've written with facts, sources, careful research. Some people are allergic to the idea of evolution. Too bad for them. They're missing a fascinating part of the world and how it works.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I worked at it with great determination and stubbornness, even discipline, since I was about 20 years old. Is it who you know or what you write? Mostly the latter, then and now. If you write something wonderful, you still need a crack in a door somewhere to get it read and considered for publication (though that's less true now in the age of blogging when, yes, it seems almost everybody is a writer of some sort). But is knowing people, having connections in publishing, enough to make you a success as a writer? No. No way. Not even close. Having the door open does no good, unless you've got some talent and discipline to carry through that door.

No, I've been nearly retired from flyfishing for a long time now. Never carry a rod when I travel for work. But I did come out of retirement this summer, in order to fish during a lovely trip down a remote river canyon in Montana, with some friends--including the fellow writers Tim Cahill and Scott McMillion. I had been a fishing guide on that same river back in the late 1970s (before anyone had heard of A River Runs Through It, book or movie). So it was lovely to revisit the river, and catch some nice browns. We even kept a few rainbows for dinner. I made fresh trout ceviche for my pals.

I moved in the opposite direction from the one you want to move: I went from fiction to nonfiction. My first book was a novel, published LONG ago (1970), when I was just out of college. I thought I was going to be a novelist. Then I discovered 2 things: 1) It's very hard to make a living as a novelist, and 2) nonfiction writing can be extremely creative and imaginative. I gradually turned into a nonfiction writer with a special interest in the life sciences. Did I have academic training in science? Almost none. I did my graduate work on William Faulkner. But I've learned a lot of biology in the course of on-the-job self-education over the past 35 years.

A limstone cave in southern China, near the city of Guilin, where I went to trap bats with the scientist looking for the reservoir species that holds the SARS virus, would certainly be up on the list. Also, Tasmania. Madagascar. And I love the Congo forests. Walking through the Congo forests is lovely and relaxing compared to walking through the streets of the Congo capital, Kinshasa. That said, I'll add that I love the people of the Congo as well as their forests and wildlife.

For The Song of the Dodo, I saw amazing creatures on islands all over the world. Just about got my butt munched by a Komodo dragon. Birds of paradise in a remote forest in the Aru Islands. Every book yields something like that. The brown bears of Romania, huge and abundant, for Monster of God. Ebola virus and the mystery of its secret reservoir, for the new book.

I never got to Manchuria. Wish I had. Did get to Mongolia. Some of the people I met during research for Monster were a bit loopy and wacky, yes. But interestingly so--like the wonderful crocodile taxidermist, Andrew, in northern Australia, who taught me how to tan a croc skin, and served me a nice lunch of barramundi from his hot plate.

Good question. The Long Follow, my project on Mike Fay and his Megatransect, never became a book because of a disagreement with that particular publisher (who shall be nameless here). Instead I put the Megatransect pieces, as they'd appeared in Nat Geo, into the new edition of my older book Natural Acts, published by my current (and much loved by me) publisher, WW Norton. Even more importantly, certain events from what would have been The Long Follow helped to inform, and became part of, my new book, just out, Spillover.

I try to ask simple questions, the same sort of questions a layman wants to hear answered. This is my method even if I've done a lot of homework in a scientific field, trying to bring myself up to speed to talk with the expert. Yes, it's important to have a basis of knowledge before talking to such an expert. But then also, I think, it's important to dial back, not try to show off your knowledge to the interviewee, and ask the sorts of basic questions, leading from one thing to another, that will result in the expert telling the story of his or her work and ideas in a way that average people can understand. I don't always heed my own advice on this--I catch myself slipping into the deep technical stuff, when I read my transcripts later. But it's a principle I TRY to follow.

It began for me about 12 years ago, when I was sitting at a campfire in a forest in Central Africa. Two local fellows were talking, in French, about the time when Ebola virus hit their village. It was terrible. Then one mentioned: At about the same time, we saw "a pile of thirteen dead gorillas" nearby in the forest. That image, that phrase, stuck in my mind and became the starting point for a book.
Six years later, National Geographic asked me to do a story on zoonotic diseases. So I went back into the field, began meeting disease scientists, seeing the fieldwork. that story ran as "Deadly Contact" in 2007. From there, it became a full-on book project.
Scariest thing I've learned? Well, one of them is that forms of the simian virus that became AIDS have spilled over into humans, from chimps and monkeys in Africa, at least TWELVE times. Only one of those spillovers accounts for most AIDS cases around the world The other eleven have been less consequential. But the takeaway message is: This is not an uncommon event. Twelve times that we know of. It could happen again. There could be another, and parallel pandemic from the same sort of virus.

Takes me about six years to research and write a book. Feels like doing a PhD each time. I travel much, both for book research and for National Geographic assignments. Yes, when I'm in a tropical forest or some other remote place, I carry a field notebook and makes notes as I go; then I also write an account of the day's events in a journal. The journal is usual written next morning. Years later, when I write the book, I have both the notebooks and the journals--plus a lot of other material--to work from.